Let Me In
by Batasyl
Summary: She had lost her memories but not the green eyes that mattered most. He had been alone for so long that he could not go on. From the depths of despair, would they find a light — a soul mate, someone who would give each of them a reason to live, to exist, to go on.
1. Chapter 1

I write and painted.

I also walked and talked and occasionally ate pudding. But, mostly, I write and painted. Everything else was unnecessary. Walking, talking, eating, _breathing…_

Writing and painting mattered more than being ambulatory or chatty or full of pudding. Of course, I had to breathe to live and therefore to write and paint I have to be alive so I suppose breathing mattered, too.

But, mostly, the midnight colors of red, black and purple mattered. And green. Oh, that particular elusive shade of green so hard to capture even with the most careful blending of oils on paper.

Yes. The green of his eyes mattered most of all.

"Not hungry today, dear? Not even for Tapioca?"

 _Talking, talking, there isn't time for talking._

I carefully swirled green-tipped fingers on the canvas that held my full attention. Urgency caused my chest to tighten and my head to hurt, but I wasn't a fool. The nurse picked up the neglected tray that had sat on a nearby table all morning. I'd have to stop and eat the next food that was brought to me. Not only because I'd be light-headed by then but also because, if you didn't eat something once or twice a day, paper, pencil, paint and canvas would disappear.

I would eat when I finished his eyes. They were the trickiest aspect of the stranger to recreate because they were always changing. I could never capture the expression though I'd seen it in my nightmare thousands of times.

It was the change I tried to paint, a simple shifting of dark to light.

I'd never gotten it right. It's easier to write about them but it's not enough. I want, no I _need_ to see.

"Always the same, love. A handsome devil for sure, but why the same man over and over and over again?"

The nurse was new. I didn't throw a handful of paint at her or scream my frustration or try to knock the hours old pudding from her hands. It wasn't right to strike out when someone "meant well." I'd been told that in the beginning. A lot. It was something I already knew, but I'd forgotten just as I'd forgotten so many things.

I would never be able to remember if I had to talk at the same time but I was also afraid of losing my paint if I didn't try.

"He watches over me…I think. I see him in my dreams."

I dropped my hands to my lap not even noticing the smears of green left there on an old smock from hundreds of just such moments before.

The eyes were finished, but they were wrong. They were too dark and angry, almost frightening. Goosebumps rose on the back of my neck as I looked into the wrong eyes for the hundredth time.

"A guardian, you say? Like an angel?" The nurse—her name was Judy, or Jenny, or Jamie—walked around the room from painting to painting. Names didn't matter. I was terrified if I learned new names I'd lose the beloved ones I couldn't recall because they hovered on the edge of my consciousness like echoes of a yesterday that never was. Canvases were hung and propped and stacked everywhere and these had caught her attention. "But…no wings?"

The nurse had turned back to me as the not-quite-right shade of green dried on my fingers.

"He's not an angel," I corrected. As always, I felt slightly defeated but also relieved to have failed. If I didn't get the eyes right then maybe such an intimidating creature didn't exist.

In spite of the relief, I'd be driven to try again and again.

For some reason, I had to get it right. An obsessive loop my doctors called it. There was so much my doctors didn't understand. I might have forgotten who I was before I came to St. Teresa's, but the sense of urgency I had—to remember this one man—was a life line to my lost memories I couldn't release.

"Not an angel?" The nurse repeated thoughtfully running a finger down the handsome cheek of the man I had painted hundreds of times since I'd been brought to the hospital a year before.

"Not at all," I whispered, shivering as I looked into the wrong eyes.

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I didn't have much to bring with me to Belle Rosaliѐ. When the ivy-covered wrought iron that surrounded the old house loomed large in front of me, my possessions seemed even more meager. The ghostly white French revival style "cottage" sat with silent prominence behind the elaborate iron. It was a mansion by today's standards. I had only a creaky old steamer trunk filled with carefully rolled canvases, a much more modern suitcase on wobbly wheels packed with the simple clothing I'd needed at St. Teresa's and a shoulder bag with a few personal items that meant nothing to me. I didn't remember why I carried the silver-handled hairbrush or the faded lavender ribbon or the book of French fairytales, worn and obviously well-read.

I only knew it was late and I hadn't painted all day.

The hollow ache in my stomach, the nerves skittering along my spine as I looked up at the glow of windows shuttered against the night, mattered much less than my clean fingers and my restless need to find the man I tried so hard to recall.

I missed my quiet room at St. Teresa's and the orderly schedule that allowed me to devote myself to his mystery. But even if my benefactor hadn't died, I could no longer stay. I'd grown increasingly certain if I didn't remember soon it would be too late. When I'd been summoned to Belle Rosaliѐ and a nurse had put me and my belongings into a car someone had hired to fetch me, I didn't protest. It was time. My blood sang it with the beat of my heart. It was time. The nurse had hugged me and promised to write.

I'd never allowed myself to learn her name.

The driver opened the gate and it swung wide on well-oiled hinges. I could see pineapples worked into the design of the ironwork, but the welcome of the traditional symbolism made me uneasy instead of soothed. I wasn't a visitor come to enjoy the fruits of a successful trade voyage. I was marooned. Lost in a world that might never be grounded in the memories of my previous life again.

But, for some reason, it was the fleur-de-lis rising out of the scrolled hearts along the top of the gate that caused me to dread putting one foot in front of the other to carry me through. I did it anyway, of course. I'd been hiding away at St. Teresa's for too long.

The walkway beneath my feet was made of interlacing bricks that fit together in rows of jagged teeth. I recognized the rough edges and slightly imperfect surfaces of handmade stone and found it cruel that I would remember such unimportant details about the world when I'd forgotten everything and everyone that mattered.

The driver carried my trunk and I followed him up to the imposing entrance of Belle Rosaliѐ. There had been a sign on the gate I'd read by the light of the street lamps. The house had been built one hundred and fifty years ago for the mistress of a wealthy New Orleans judge just before the Civil War. He'd been a Gardner and she'd been a La Croix.

La Croix.

The name caused my heartbeat to skip erratically in my chest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Two great palazzos stretched across the front and around the sides of the house. Artistically turned, white columns held up these double porches. In the glow of the porch lights, I could barely make out the evidence of aged paint gone from white to ivory through a hundred years of thick reapplication. The weighty evidence of so much history was oppressive to someone who had no history at all. I was nothing and no one approaching a place that had obviously meant a great deal to many people through the years.

As he walked, the columns shadowed the driver's face and the shifting darkness on his cheeks disturbed me. I almost imagined the house was reaching out to touch us. I could feel the cool slide of shadows on my own face though I knew that should be impossible. I could almost imagine a dark assessment taking place.

We came closer to the house and climbed the broad front steps to the door. My throat threatened to close and my respiration grew shallow and quick. Had I been here before? If so, my body was telling me I didn't want to be here again.

Ever again.

Even the heavy sweet scent of night blooming jasmine carried on a faint breeze across my cheeks failed to soothe me. The touch of air was spidery. I wanted to brush it away. The scent caused goose bumps to rise on my skin as if, deep down, I was instinctively afraid. It was incredibly difficult to trust instincts that rose out of nowhere with no memory to ground them in reality.

The driver rang the bell and I jerked because its dulcet, ringing tones caused something inside of me to go aching and raw. But I knew nothing of ache. Not in those moments while we waited. Not until the heavy oaken door swung open to reveal the perfect shade of blue.

"Riley," he said. And I knew my name, as I hadn't for twelve long months. They'd told me, of course. They'd used it to address me. But it hadn't been _me_ until he uttered it in the long, low accent of Louisiana French Creole.

My artist's eye catalogued the brown waves of his hair, the high prominent cheekbones and the Gallic nose, but some hidden part of me that had been suddenly magnetized noticed other things—the swell of his lips in an otherwise lean face, the thick sooty lashes so dark against the blue of his irises. Though I didn't lack skill, the chance that I would ever have achieved his exact likeness on canvas was revealed to me as never.

"Are you Charlie La Croix?" The driver asked the man.

"Yes. I'm La Croix," he replied and even though I didn't know my own last name or where I'd gone to school, I knew he was Old Louisiana. It was in the slightly arrogant tilt to his chin and the cultured tones of his southern drawl. It was in the cut of his jaw and the gleam of his eyes against his skin. He had received all that was beautiful from his multicultural background—the Native American, French and Spanish—but he had the carriage of a man who could trace his roots all the way back to the original settlement, he was surely an aristocrat through and through.

La Croix drew me forward, when he'd said my name, it had sounded too intimate as if the utterance held all my secrets in its simple syllables. He corrected himself now, coolly, until I thought I must have imagined his ability to peer into a past I couldn't see no matter how I strained and strived.

"Welcome to Belle Rosaliѐ," he said.

I couldn't tell him I was welcome nowhere, that I was too lost, wandering a world I couldn't recognize, surrounded by strangers and constant confusion. I couldn't tell him that I regained my equilibrium only when I write and painted because I recognized and understood the laws writing and of paint on canvas when all else seemed to have deserted me.

Moisture welled in my eyes from frustration, loss and exhaustion brought on by the overwhelming changes I'd faced that day. It had taken all the courage I could muster to step out into a strange world with no memories to anchor me in it. I mustered more courage to hold back the tears, but if he saw my emotion, he didn't acknowledge it. He simply took my trunk from the driver and directed me inside.

Walking into Belle Rosaliѐ was difficult. The air seemed thick and stubborn almost as if it would hold me back and press me out. Though it must have been nearly two hundred years old, the Cyprus floors gleamed and the vintage silk wallpaper glowed, barely faded for all its years. And, yet, I felt those years, every one of them, around me. The air was heavy, filled as it was with bygone whispers.

"We've prepared a room for you upstairs," La Croix said, motioning to the curving staircase that branched like a wishbone at the top where landings led into two wings of the house. I barely noted the "we". I was too overwhelmed by the house itself.

"I will never understand how they could have considered this a 'cottage'," I said.

He blinked as if surprised that I would know history. Had he been told that I barely recognized my own face in the mirror when I first went to St. Teresa's? Once he came to know me better, he would realize that the mundane hadn't left me. Only the vital. Only my heart.

"Yes. Apparently this house was considered discrete when it was built. Not hidden, you understand. The owner's relationship was formally acknowledged by society at the time. Her children had an inheritance from their father and fine social standing…just not his name. Her mother was a French opera singer. Her father was a trapper more American than French."

"La Croix," I said, softly. The name was both strange and beguiling with vague familiarity on my tongue.

"Yes," he replied. "She took her mother's name." He looked at me with that expectant pause I'd learned to dread. The one that seemed to wait for me to suddenly blink and remember everything. The one that said he knew more than I knew about my past, but it was too heavy with shadows to share. The weight of all I didn't know behind his hooded eyes was almost more than I could bear.

"Will I have a place to paint?" I asked, desperate to regain my equilibrium.

"Always," La Croix said. Now there was impatience in his clipped tones and maybe disappointment. It didn't seem leveled at me, but rather the world around us as if he'd like to grab it and shake it into place with his bare fisted hands. The uncomfortable moment passed, but another followed it. My "always" consists of the three hundred and sixty five days I can remember. All else is as if it never was. I had to have known Charlie La Croix. What had he been to me and why was his name the one name I'd allowed myself to know in a year?

"Come with me," La Croix said. He carried the trunk filled with imperfect portraits up the stairs and I followed. The white of his knuckles stood out on his fingers as he held the trunk's handles tighter than necessary. But I also noticed the way his black shirt stretched across his shoulders and the way his broad back narrowed to a nipped athletic waist. Not because I'm an artist. Something else in me had wakened. A sleeping woman who now yawned and sat up to note the way La Croix's powerful legs took the stairs. He was very tall, topping me by at least a foot. I had to rush to keep up with him though his stride was steady and slow.

I tried not to stare, but I failed.

The song in my blood had changed to, " _Caution. Caution_." But when he turned to make sure I followed him down the long dark upstairs hall, there were shadows in his eyes I was no longer sure I should have been driven to find.

He didn't take me to a guest bedroom. While my blood still sang and the magnet pulled and I avoided the dark light in his blue eyes, he led me onward until we came to a corner of the house I knew to be a rounded turret I'd seen from the street.

When he turned the key and opened the door, I breathed out a rush of air I hadn't realized I'd been holding tight in my lungs like a diver plunged deep into a cold, tumultuous sea.

I stepped forward onto paint-spattered tarps. Here they covered the Cyprus floors and led me in a wrinkled path straight to an easel and stool. Beside the easel, a long low bench held the paints I'd need. Only the deep, rich midnight colors I'd been working with for the past year and the necessary others for blending.

I dropped my bag and went for the paints and blank canvas.

But, unlike at St. Teresa's, the world didn't narrow and fade around me. La Croix walked to a wall and placed the trunk against it and I watched him even as I began to mix and blend the deep purple I'd need for the background of the painting already taking amorphous shape in my mind.

This time I would paint something different.

"Riley," La Croix said and my fingers actually stilled. I didn't make a move as he approached. I didn't blink or breathe. There was still a hint of impatience in his voice or maybe it was frustration. He worked his hands open and closed as if he needed to do something with them now that the trunk had been placed on the floor. He didn't stop until he stood directly beside my perch on the stool. The proximity of his warm body was more of a distraction to my senses than I'd ever allowed before when the paint called to me.

"Y…yes?" I replied.

I slowly rose to my feet because he was so tall and I didn't want to feel small beside him. I immediately knew it for a mistake. He was still taller than me. I had to tilt my chin to meet his gaze and our bodies were also much closer than they had been before. I had met day after empty day for a year as if life was a vacuum threatening to leave me forever in limbo surrounded by nothingness. Surely I could look into this familiar stranger's eyes.

I rubbed my fingers together.

The cool slide of bruised lavender reminded me I couldn't reach up to trace the planes of his face no matter how they intrigued me.

He searched my direct gaze and I let him because paint was already on my fingers and I couldn't run away from him without running away from the canvas I was compelled to fill.

"They told me that you sometimes forget to eat or sleep," he began.

"No. I don't forget. Not about those things," I said. I never forgot my need for food and rest. I'd only learned exactly how little I needed to survive.

"Not here. You'll have breakfast, lunch and dinner at Belle Rosaliѐ. Do you understand?" La Croix asked.

There was an intensity to his expression. This seemed…personal. He wasn't a nurse hired to keep me well. The line they had drawn in the sand had shifted. I could almost imagine him kicking it out and redrawing it closer to normal. He had stilled his restless hands by placing them on his trim hips.

"They said you rarely go outdoors, but we have a beautiful garden," La Croix continued. He looked away from me toward the windows. "Visit it," he said.

I couldn't say no. He held his lean body so still and contained as if he expected me to balk. Suddenly, I wanted to eat and walk in the garden to prove to him that I could. I had amnesia, but other than that and my compulsion to paint, I was perfectly fine. So fine that I knew this was like saying a skydiver without a parachute could make it to the ground.

As if of its own volition, my paint-smeared hand reached up to touch his face. He started and turned back to me, his arms falling to his sides, and even the embarrassing realization that I'd gotten paint on his smooth skin didn't make me regret that my fingers had a will of their own.

"Walks in the garden won't fix me," I confessed. I'm not sure why, but I needed him to understand that deeper things in me than met the eye were broken.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello lovely readers.**

 _IAteTobias'_ to answer your question, there is another character coming in to the story. This story focuses on the three main characters.

As for La Croix, this is Charlie's great grandmother's last name who is French.

This is a different type of writing for me. My way of writing depends solely on my mood and sometimes I like to shake it up a bit...

Hope you guys give this story a chance because personally this is one of my favourite so far :)

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 **Chapter 3**

Alone.

I'd lived alone for over a century that I'd had enough, and so I'd decided to end it that night, and I prayed to whatever gods might exist that there was no such thing as the immortality of the soul, or that if there was, I had lost mine long ago. I had no desire to go on. Not then. Not in any form.

There remained in me, ironically, the heart of a romantic, the soul of a poet who didn't compose, only _felt._ Fitting, then, that I chose to make my last moments on this earth worthy. That is why I found myself lying on the hard, dew-dampened cliff above a thundering waterfall in the darkest hours of that long ago night.

I lay there, listening to the roar of the waterfall and tasting its mist on the air. I stared up at a moonless sky full of diamond-like stars and waited to see the sunrise for the first time in countless centuries. I wondered how high that golden orb would climb before its kiss caused my body to smolder; how long I would be allowed to gaze upon it before fire consumed my flesh and bones.

It would be painful — unbearably, maddeningly painful to a creature whose senses were as heightened as those of a centuries-old vampire. I will not say I didn't fear the pain — I did. I waited in dread of it. And yet, I would welcome it for the sweet release of nothingness I so hoped would await me on the other side.

It had been a long life, a full one. But not a good one. Immortality had been wasted on a man like me.

I lay there, awaiting the sun, awaiting death, my back upon the cool, solid stone of the earth, my face and clothes coated in the falls' mist, my eyes filled with the stars as they faded slowly into a sky that paled from indigo to purple. It wouldn't be long now. Another hour, two at most.

The roar and rush of water was joined by the harmony of those birds that rose before dawn and began their nightly task of singing up the sun. I listened to that song as I never had before. Always it had been a warning to me. Now it was a dirge, my personal requiem. I closed my eyes and relished the symphony as I awaited death's arrival.

Then an unwelcome sound stumbled into the song — one of discord — a sour note that did not belong and that would change everything. I think I knew it, even then. It was the sound of a woman, crying.

I opened my eyes, angered at the interruption. Ruined. My beautiful, poetic exit from the world was ruined. Sitting up, I sought the source of the weeping, thinking the interloper would be fortunate if I didn't decide to take her with me on my final journey. When I saw her, I rose to my feet, my body acting of its own will.

Even at this distance I could see that she was beautiful. There was no question, not to my preternatural eyes. She stood on the opposite side of the dark cascade, on the very edge, staring down into the rocky froth far below, and I knew that she intended to jump.

She intended to die. Just like me.

From the moment my eyes fixed upon her, my awareness of my own misery faded. Her misery, instead, filled my mind. Her brown hair, long and curling, moved with every blast of wet wind that rose from the pounding falls. I willed her mind to open to mine. It wasn't difficult to read her — her emotions were bubbling over. There was pain and grief — overwhelming grief.

Why, I wondered? What could cause such pain in one so young?

Suddenly, I knew I had no time to plunder the depths of her mind in search of answers, for she inched nearer the edge, her unclothed toes curling over the side, her chin lifting even as she opened her arms to her sides like a beautiful _Angel_ drying its feathered wings in the morning sun.

I shouted, using the full power of my voice — an awesome thing in a vampire as old as I. _"Stop! Wait!"_

She flinched, her eyes fixing on mine across the yawning chasm. She showed no fear at the unnatural force of my command, though she had to know that voice could belong to no ordinary man. Facing me she stared, and then her eyes widened — with recognition.

I held up a hand, telling her without another word to remain where she was. She knew me — not sure how but she does. She must obey.

And yet, she did not. Rather, she leaned forward and fell, more than jumped, into the void. Left with no choice, I dove — and with little more than the force of my will and the wisdom of instinct — arrowed my body downward, angling toward her.

She fell slowly, her body flat, arms and legs splayed. I shot, arms and feet pointed, my body cutting through the air like a blade, even as the power of my mind tried to slow her descent and speed my own.

I had not mastered flight, though some of my kind had. I could change my form, but it took time to accomplish such a feat, and time was something I did not have. So my choice — if it could be termed a choice at all — was to break her fall with my own body.

Everything seemed to happen at half speed. I sliced through the upsurge of mists that seemed to bolster her. And then I was there, my body colliding with hers. I tried to make the impact less than crushing as I wrapped my arms around her slender frame and I turned to put my back to the earth.

For one instant her eyes, a gleaming brown, held mine with a force I'd never felt. "Why?" she whispered.

The pain in that single word was beyond understanding, and for the life of me I could not think of an answer. I didn't know why.

Pain exploded in me then, as the river's jagged rock teeth stopped our descent all at once. Icy water enveloped me, filled my nose, mouth and lungs. Bones cracked beneath my skin and all went dark.

I knew even as I embraced it that this was not the darkness of death. This respite was temporary — as it had been so many other times before. It was the same darkness that was my prison, my life.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello lovely readers. I'm glad that there are people that likes the story. And to clarify, yes, Chapter 3 is being told in Lucas perspective. This story will be going back and forth between Riley and Lucas' POV.**

 **I didn't rate the story mature but there are some mature scenes but never trashy.**

 **Enjoy reading :)**

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 **Chapter 4**

I woke to the smell of a wood fire. Pain wracked my body. I knew then, it must still be night. I couldn't have been unconscious for long. Some time, however, had clearly passed.

I lay in the shelter of a cave, behind the face of the waterfall, and I saw a tunnel that twisted farther into the mountainside and downward, away from the cascade, which must have been the path we'd taken. The tiny fire leapt and danced a few feet from me, and my clothes were drying, slowly, on my body. She sat on the other side of the fire, gazing at me through the tongues of yellow flame.

"I thought you might be dead," she said. Her voice was like honey with bits of the comb still caught in its depths; smooth with unaccustomed coarseness tripping it up now and again. "I am glad you're not."

"But not so glad that you are not."

She blinked and averted her eyes. "Not so glad of that, no."

"Why?"

Lowering her head, she let her small shoulders slump forward. Her dress was faded brown and plain, its neckline rounded, its fabric worn. "I do not belong here," she whispered. "I don't know who I am or what I am. I don't belong here. There's nothing for me here."

I nodded. "I see."

Her eyes narrowed. "You aren't going to argue with me? Tell me how much I have to live for, how much lies ahead for a young girl, the way all the others have done?"

"Why would I argue against seeking the solace of death when I was up there tonight planning to seek it out for myself?"

She blinked, clearly stunned by the revelation. "But you — why?"

"I've known pain. And I bled, just as you do. No, I'll not argue with you, pretty one. I cannot even tell you why I took it upon myself to interfere with your plans. Except…"

"Except?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Except that I was so struck by your beauty, I couldn't help myself. It was pure selfishness on my part. For one brief instant, when I looked at you on that precipice, I thought I glimpsed —" I drew a breath and plunged on. For what difference did it make now, whether I spoke honestly or falsely for the sake of manners or pride? "I thought I glimpsed a reason to live for perhaps one more night."

"That reason being — to save me?"

"No," I said quickly. "Not to save you. To…know you. To speak to you. To share my pain with someone who might understand it." I lowered my head. "I told you. Entirely selfish. I'm sorry if I have prolonged your suffering by my thoughtless intrusion."

She studied me for a long moment, and finally lowered her eyes and whispered, "I can die as easily tomorrow as tonight, I suppose. Tell me about your pain."

I stared back at her. The flames sizzled and popped. And I heard myself whisper, "Perhaps I will. But there is this first. What I tell you here, in this cave has never been told to another soul. It can never leave this place."

She shrugged. "I don't intend to ever leave this place. I will take your secrets to my grave."

"So tell me," she whispered. "How is it you speak in a voice louder than the waterfall? And how is it you flew through the mists to save me?"

"How do you think?" I asked. "I can see you have some notion. You know me. I don't know how but I see the recognition in your eyes. So perhaps, you should tell me how I've saved you."

She smiled, not a smile of joy, but one of bitterness. "I don't know who you are but I've seen you. I've been seeing you every time I close my eyes." She fixed her eyes upon his mouth. "The nurses said that you're an angel…my guardian angel."

For the first time I saw a light in her eyes. A light of excitement, of danger. She was reckless, this one. "And what do _you_ say?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Maybe they are right. You did save me. Why?"

I shrugged. "I told you."

Her eyes widened. "Because you're alone. And you're lonely."

 _"Or, I just need you_ because I haven't fed in three nights. Right now, in fact, with just a sip of your virgin's blood I can erase the hunger I feel."

Her smile died slowly. "You're trying to frighten me. You can't, you know. If you wish to take my blood, take it. Drain me and leave me dead. I don't care."

"I wouldn't leave you dead, my beauty. Only gasping with pleasure. And perhaps no longer so virginal."

Her eyes were dark and fiery as she surged to her feet and came around the fire. She knelt in front of me, and tore the neckline of her dress open, baring her neck and her breasts. "I am not scared of you," she said. "If it's my virginity you want, you've no need to resort to horror stories. I'd rather give it to you before I die or someone takes it from me against my will."

I stared at her. Her breasts, round and firm with youth. Her beauty and vitality overwhelmed me, and the hunger that gnawed at me night after night rose up like a beast and demanded sustenance.

I sat up slowly, and the hunger overshadowed even the pain that movement caused. I reached for her, clasped her nape in my hand, and drew her closer. With my lips, I traced a path along her jawline from her chin, to her neck, to her collarbone, to her breasts, giving my full attention to them until the girl was breathless and arching in pleasure.

Then I slid my mouth upward again, to her neck, her delicious, salty neck. I parted my lips and suckled the skin there, feeling the rush of blood in her jugular as surely as I could feel the pounding of the waterfall outside our cave.

Cupping her head, tugging it backward just enough, I bit down. And when my fangs pierced the vein and her blood rushed over my tongue, I felt everything she felt — including the climax that rocked her body.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

That mere sip of her blood hit me as a bolt of lightning would have. So ferocious was its power, that I dropped the woman and stumbled backward, falling onto my haunches, breathless and stunned. Only belatedly did I realize that she lay there, still, on the cold stone, her hair spread around her like a puddle of brown silk.

Scrambling to my feet, my nerves still tingling and snapping with whatever power lurked within her blood, I hurried back to her, knelt over her, and lifted her from the floor. Her hair fell like a curtain, but I saw no blood, felt no lump on her head.

"Wake up, pretty one. Wake up."

Her brows furrowed into a tight little frown, and then she blinked and squinted at me as if I were a light that hurt her eyes. But the only light in the cave came from the fire beside us.

"What …happened?"

"You don't remember?"

Screwing her face in concentration, she nodded. "Ah, yes. You tried to frighten me with silly _vampire tales_. And then you kissed me." As she said it she lifted a hand to touch her neck, where the skin was no doubt tender.

"Did you faint from fear? Or desire?" I asked, wondering if she had felt the power when her blood melded with my own. Had she forgotten it, in her swoon? Or was she only denying the memory because she did not understand it?

"I faint at any overabundance of excitement," she said, lowering her head. "I used to be so strong. So very strong, but now. I told you I don't know who I am. I can't remember. I can only remember Charlie. And you. Not remember but see. I see your face and your eyes all the time. _Who are you_?."

I couldn't help but smile. "I thought I was your guardian angel."

"I didn't say that. The nurses at St. Teresa did."

It was a shame. And yet, I was beginning to understand why I'd been so compelled to save her — even when doing so would thwart my own plans — and to see the powerful impact from a mere taste of her blood.

I had to know for sure.

"Are you ill?" I asked _. "_ You keep saying you don't know who you are. Do you have an amnesia?"

"No, I don't think I'm ill. I mean I feel fine other than I can't seem to remember exactly who I am. And now, I'm staying at a big house and sharing it with a man that I feel uncomfortable with. He seems nice enough but there's something that's—never mind. I'm just confused I guess."

I lowered my head, feeling her pain. Feeling _her,_ more than I had before. There was a connection between us; I knew it now. And that tiny sip of her blood had strengthened it still more.

She was like me. She was one of _The Chosen._

Could I tell her what she was? Should I?

God knew it was information no one had bothered to share with me. And I'd resented it — for centuries I'd resented it.

"I have to go," the beautiful creature went on, "It'll be morning soon and I don't want to alarm the people in the house."

"I understand."

"You cannot possibly understand."

I hooked my finger beneath her chin, tipping her face up to mine. "But I do. You may not remember exactly who you are right now but you can never fully forget who you were. You are a beautiful woman. A truly beautiful woman inside and out. And —"

Her small gasp silenced me. Her eyes met mine, wide and amazed. "How can you know?"

"Because I know you."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Once I left green eyes, I went back to the house and sat in the room and painted until my neck grew stiff and my back grew tight. I tried to reclaim the feeling of urgency that had always gripped me at St. Teresa's, but it's different here. I couldn't focus. At the clinic, there had been a friendly detachment that allowed me to stay separate and apart in my own paint-filled world. I couldn't shake the feeling that, here, the house had swallowed me whole and it watched me closely as I began to digest. I looked behind my back many times, but there was never anyone there. La Croix hadn't closed the door. The dark hallway sat silent and empty. But my neck prickled and I kept expecting to see someone watching me from the shadows. Now and then there came a creaking as if the floor was lightly traversed by someone I could never see.

He was back for me and I didn't protest. By the time the chimes in the hall declared the hour, the entire white canvas had been coated with a textural layer of swirling violets from lavender to purple. I was ready to stop. Unlike the paintings of green eye, which had driven me from start to finish, I didn't know what came next.

La Croix walked into the room and I stood to meet him. I hadn't taken the time to put on a smock. There was as much purple paint on me as there was on the canvas. He glanced over me, but it seemed to be my face that held his attention. I know he saw a too pale waif of a woman with hollowed cheeks and plain brown hair pulled back in a sloppy, paint-speckled tail. I'd seen myself this way many times before.

La Croix came closer and even though I now knew what my face looked like I was certain I wouldn't recognize the look in my eyes. It felt new. I'd always been desperate to see a familiar face. Now I was afraid there might be fear mixed in my desperation.

"I came earlier to see if you'd like to see your room but you weren't around. Did you spend the night here painting?" he asked. It was a low Louisiana murmur. I didn't trust myself to do more than nod as I stepped forward. He had washed his face. There was no trace of my fingerprints on his cheek. 'I came to show you your room now."

Suddenly, his hand came up and I flinched. He may look and feel familiar, but there's something about him that rattles me. I stilled and swallowed, finding a bit of internal steel to prop my spine as he lightly traced my eyebrow with a warm finger.

"You're afraid," he said and I thought I felt a current of response in the air around us that echoed the anger in his eyes

"I'm not," I said. It was a lie.

"Good. I won't harm you. You and I—," La Croix sighed. "I remember for both of us."

And then he turned away.

Screams woke me.

They were mine.

Someone had killed, here, in this house. I had seen a woman on the floor bleeding her life away in a purple room. Someone had pushed me. I had fallen. Then it was my own blood I'd seen running into my eyes.

La Croix had been there too. That's why I had woken in a lather of terror and remembered pain.

La Croix had been there too with a horrible look of the blackest fury in his eyes.

When I woke up it was already getting dark, the scent of night blooming jasmine waft my room. I found the tiny flowers and sprig of vine in a glass of water near my bedroom door. I didn't remember seeing it when I went to bed. In the morning light, the tiny white flowers were closed tight and exuded no scent. But at night the fragrance fills the air. Who had brought me the broken little piece of greenery while I slept? It hardly seemed the kind of thing La Croix would have done. The idea of him in my room while I dreamt of him was more unnerving than I could face.

There were clothes in the drawers and the closet of the room. I didn't allow myself to agonize over why they were so familiar. I took gray leggings from the bureau and a loose, raw silk shirt of the palest pink from a hanger. The fabric held the beguiling scent of lavender sachet, at once comforting and mysterious. These were my clothes, but they seemed like archeological finds. I was digging up my past a thread at a time.

I had more to paint now. Gruesome details in red and scarlet. But I made my way down to dinner instead. I didn't want to see La Croix again, but the magnet that had lodged itself beneath my breastbone called that a lie. I wanted more than to see him. I wanted to talk to him.

But I was also afraid.

A woman had died in this house and in my nightmares he had been a magnetic pull even in the midst of terror. Had he killed her? Had he pushed me? Did I have him to blame for my memory loss?

"You cried out earlier. I wanted to come to you, but…" La Croix said. He held out a wine glass and I took it with trembling hands.

"I often…dream," I said. I didn't mention the jasmine.

"They warned it might be worse here, but several of the doctors had urged my aunt to bring you ho…here. That it was time," La Croix said.

"She paid for my care," I said.

"It wasn't until she died that I discovered you hadn't disappeared on purpose." La Croix said. He watched me sip the wine. I tried to absorb the meaning behind the words "still" and "discovered". He'd been looking for me, but why?

"I'm sorry I don't remember her," I said. I had remembered him, but I didn't want him to know. I was vulnerable enough with him without adding that revelation.

Charlie.

I'd almost called him by name and it felt like the syllables would roll easily off my lips as if I'd said them a thousand times before. But I should guard against that ease. I couldn't assume he'd been looking for me for good reasons. I had only my instincts to guide me and they were unsteady at best. Urging me to step into his arms one second and then causing me to fear shadows the next. He kept his impatience and frustration held in check, but I could sense it in the tension of his broad shoulders and the set of his jaw.

Upstairs my paint waited for a dark truth I was afraid to reveal.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Lucas' POV) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

She walked towards the window, and I saw her cheeks color.

 _Riley, come. Come to me._

I walked toward the cave's entrance, where the color of the sky was darkening more than before.

I did not wait long for her to come. "The moon's rising. Do you feel it? Nightfall is coming, tugging at your senses, drawing you to explore?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I do. I thought I was the only one who could sense the dusk's approach."

"All those like us do. After the…the cure is taken, Riley, it doesn't just call to you. It insists. I… _must_ be out at night. I cannot resist it, even if I try."

She lifted her head. "What are you telling me?"

"You can be…Stay with me, here. I'll share with you all of my secrets. Secrets…a few has ever known. And perhaps it will also help you remember who you are."

I lay back on the stone, far from the entrance. Without my bidding, she came to me, and curled up beside me in the cradle of my arms.

"These secrets I will share — could cost me all that I have. Even my life," I told her. "They demand a steep price, Riley."

"I have nothing to offer," she whispered.

"You have everything to offer me, princess. In exchange for my secrets, you must agree to stay with me…for always."

"The price to learn your secret…is my companionship?"

"Yes. For the knowledge. For the secrets." My eyes were growing heavy, my body peaceful. "If you don't wish to learn —"

"Why would I refuse it?"

I closed my eyes. "You didn't want to live at all, only a short while ago."

She nodded. "I am so lost. I'm tired of the weakness, the dizziness, the sick feeling in my stomach — all of it. But do you know what's worse? Not knowing. Not knowing who you are and why you're alive. The purpose. I see no reason to go on suffering, when only death awaits me at its end. But if I could get some answer, if I could at least remember something, and…and if I could be with you… " She nodded firmly. "I would pay the price."

"You very well might," I said. "But that's for later. Riley are you willing to stay with me forever? For that is how long you will live."

She lifted her head, her eyes not quite believing, and with a trembling hand, she brushed the hair from my forehead. "Does that mean you've decided not to end your own life?"

"If I can share it with you, Riley, perhaps it might be worth going on."

Tears filled her eyes as she threaded her fingers in my hair.

"Who and what are you to me? Why am I drawn to you? I don't even know your name and yet I feel like I've known you all my life. Why is it I feel safer and secure with you than anyone else I've met this past year? I promise you I _will_ stay with you, for all my days, be they few or be they countless. And I make that promise without any need for your secrets. I make that promise freely. You owe me nothing in return. It's a promise you cannot buy."

My heart swelled. It made no sense, I know, for I barely knew the girl, and yet I felt, for the first time in my memory, something warm filling my body besides the freshly drawn blood of a living being. It might have been hope. It might have even been…love. "My name is Lucas."

And so I held her tight. And she did, too, I believe. I was more content than I had ever been. But I worried, deep inside my mind. I feared what her reaction would be when I told her the truth. That she must accept the dark gift that had been forced upon me by a demon who wanted an immortal slave.

What would she do when I told her what I was? Would she believe me? Would she flee from me in horror and disgust? Or would she embrace me still?

I listen to the sound of the night. I listen to the sound of her breathing and the thumping of her heart. Peace. I'm at peace.

"Riley, I am a creature of the night. _A vampire_."


	7. Chapter 7

AngelGirl: I'm glad that you find the story interesting. I guess I should have put the "vampire" part in the summary but then again...it's better to surprise you guys!

daghely: I like your idea...keep reading and you'll see! Thanks for loving this story.

violet1429: Riley is not a vampire.

 _XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX_

 **Chapter 7**

" _Riley, I am a creature of the night. A vampire_."

My heart contracted in my chest. I barely slept. I didn't think I can feel emptier than I already did until last night. Slowly I moved away from him and without a word walked out of the cave and went back to the house and directly to my room. I wanted to write but couldn't, I wanted to paint but won't. I knew that once I picked up the paint and brush, I would be capturing his eyes. I see it clearly now. The perfect shade of green.

" _Riley, I am a creature of the night. A vampire_."

Not a guardian angel. A vampire. A dark presence? What would become of me then? I thought I knew — my fate was bound to him. But I didn't want to think about that, not now.

After breakfast, I walked to the garden.

La Croix had explained he had business to attend to and he had disappeared. I sat by a rock with the memory of the past 48 hours. Charlie and Lucas. Lucas and Charlie. Though my heart sped, a rabbit searching for the fox that would devour it, I needed to find the purple room. Before my gathered courage could fail me, I rose up.

The house was dark. It was summertime in Louisiana and these old houses had been designed for pre-air-conditioned times. There were windows aplenty, but they faced north to south away from the midmorning sun. They were also shaded by multi-level porches and darkened further by cool colors awash in rich earth tones and brights muted by a judicious blending of deep bruised blues.

There were many locked rooms, but the skeleton key I'd taken from my studio door fit them all. It was heavy and powerful in my fingers filled with the potential for revelation.

In the chill depths of a music room with a silent, draped piano and a dusty harp, I found a small lace-covered table that held a single daguerreotype in a gilded frame.

I drew closer, guiltily fingering the skeleton key. This seemed a shrine erected to a deity I hadn't been invited to worship.

I reached forward and picked up the old sepia-toned photograph. It was faded and crackled with age, but I could see how beautiful the woman had been. Her black hair had been piled high in a Gibson Girl pouf. The uni-bosom of the time was held high by a corset, which caused impressive décolletage, but the look was made respectable by pearls and age. She'd been a mature woman when the likeness was taken. The blush on her cheeks artificial and soft wrinkles around her eyes.

The slight smile on her lips bothered me. As I stood looking into her pale eyes, I would have called it enigmatic or maybe a little sly. It was a Mona Lisa smile, hiding whatever she'd been thinking on this day so many decades ago.

The air in the room was decidedly cool. Thick tapestry drapes covered the windows. I sat the frame back in its place and backed away. The woman's long dead gaze seemed to follow my movements.

I chided myself for the fancy, but I still felt better when the key turned in the lock and the rusty tumbler fell into place with a solid, metallic clunk.

I thought about abandoning my search for the purple room and going out to the garden instead. The house was heavy and hushed around me. Expectant. Every step I took on the polished floor seemed too loud and bound to betray my nightmare-fueled curiosity to La Croix.

Had the woman in the photograph been the mistress I'd read about on the plaque on the gate? The left-hand wife given this house as a token of affection and esteem? La Croix's great grandmother had been the Belle Rosaliѐ. It seemed natural that her photograph would have a place of honor in the house and yet it still made me uncomfortable. The memory of her sly smile followed me even after the door was closed.

At the thought, I heard a muffled thump from deeper into the recesses of the downstairs hall. I probably should have taken it as a hint to flee. What would La Croix think if he found me snooping around so deeply that I was willing to unlock rooms that had obviously been sealed?

But just as paint and canvas drew me, and La Croix himself, the noise beckoned me closer instead of driving me away. There was so much I didn't know.

I passed several doors without trying my key because the thump came again and again. It was rhythmic and paired with a sighing creak time and time again. My ears strained to ascertain its location but somehow without aural perception I would have known.

A mahogany door slowly, slowly opened inward as I approached and I knew before I reached it that the purple room was about to be revealed to me.

There was no one inside.

The door came to a stop after a few inches. No breeze stirred, but I told myself it had been a draft and nothing more.

I stepped forward, drawing the scent of dust and aged carpeting into my lungs.

Dark shades of violet damask on the walls exactly matched the shades I had placed on canvas the night before.

I was in the nightmare room.

Its shadowed interior enveloped me in a musty embrace. Why hadn't it been locked too? Death seemed to linger in this place, waiting to be recalled. I saw where the body had fallen. I imagined the rug's elaborate design darker in places than it should have been. I wished the room had been locked or destroyed or forever hidden from my memories.

But still I stepped farther and farther into the setting of my worst nightmares. I found myself reaching to test the beveled edge of a heavy cherry rocking chair. One trembling set of fingers traced the indentions, carefully gauging the mark it would make if a vulnerable forehead smashed against it.

When I pulled my hand away, the rocker swayed back to thump the wall. I recognized the sighing creak of its movement on the rug.

It had been moving before I stepped foot in the room.

I backed away.

My gaze quickly tried to see into all the dark shadows. The room was a playroom. Besides the rocker, there was a toy giraffe hobbyhorse with a shabby moth-eaten hide and a porcelain doll near it on a straight-backed chair. The doll had very familiar lavender ribbons plaited into its long dark curls. One like them lay near a silver-handled brush in my room.

I took another step back and then another. I suddenly feared that the door behind me would slowly close, inexorably, inch by inch, cutting me off from the outside world. Once again I felt threatened by the house's acidic digestion. Who would care if I were locked up in this purple room as if it was my tomb?

As I glanced behind me to gauge the distance I needed to travel to escape, a sudden biting click came from the other direction. I slowly turned around to face the direction the noise had come from. I scanned the rocker. I looked at the giraffe. And, then, I forced my reluctant gaze to the doll.

The doll's eyes were open.

Its blue glass orbs stared and stared.

"No," I said.

I no longer wanted to remember anything at all.

The carpet had been smooth moments before when I'd noted where the body had lain. It tripped me now, when I tried to whirl and leave, impossibly rolled into wrinkles under my feet. I fell away from the edge of the rocker, thank God, but directly onto the suspiciously dark patterns where the dead woman had been.

I gasped.

My cheek pressed against musty wool threads and there rose from its threadbare depths a metallic hint that made me cough and gag and struggle to rise.

On my knees, I saw the rocker continue its motion much longer than my touch would have inspired—thump, thump, thump.

And then Charlie called my name.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Charlie came to me, filling the doorway with a solid presence my panic soaked up with sudden relief. I gathered myself and made to stand, but he came to my side and offered a strong arm to help me to my feet before I could complete the move on my own.

I didn't pull away.

He was warm and steady and oh so real in that moment. I should have distanced myself right away from his tall, lean form. I should have been as afraid of him as I was this purple room from my nightmares with its squeaky rocking chair and its wakening doll.

I wasn't.

The magnet he had woken in me was in full effect. At the edges of my perception, I noted that the chair had stilled and the porcelain doll slept once more. But, by far, the balance of my attention was on La Croix. His wide solid chest was against my breasts. His muscular arms held me close.

"You shouldn't be here," he said and it was a rumbling murmur that sent answering vibrations down my spine.

I didn't know if he meant "here" in this room or "here" at Belle Rosaliѐ. I thought maybe both.

"There is nowhere else," I replied.

I didn't remember other places and I'd been told he was legally my guardian until I could prove my competence. I couldn't imagine doing that until my memory returned or I could distance myself from the painting that consumed my days. But the magnet that pulled me to him insisted that there was nowhere else but here, now, in the circle of his arms with our hearts beating fast and close together and his face tilting down close to mine, there was nowhere else to be. This past year—all my struggles, my painting, and the nightmares—had led me back to this room and his trembling touch.

Because he did shake.

I could feel contained emotion in his hands when he brought them up to touch my face. I resisted, afraid of what he might see in my eyes, but he was firm, tilting my chin with the press of his fingers against my jaw.

"I thought I'd lost you," he said.

His words might have made sense to another me I no longer knew, a Riley whose desire for the full sensual touch of the masculine lips so close to her own wasn't tinged with fear and confusion. His warm breath teased across my mouth and his eyes searched mine as if he was still looking for the woman I searched for too.

"I am lost," I said.

My voice matched his fingers, firm, but held there by force of will when tremulous tried to happen.

"No. I have you. I won't let you go," Charlie murmured.

I lifted my hands and placed them over his on either side of my face as a defensive move. His intensity frightened me, but there was also a warmth rising up in me to meet his fingertips, telling me I was somehow fiercely glad that he wouldn't let me go.

When he dipped his head to take the lips he held in place for his to meet, I tightened my grip on his hands, but not to push them away. I held on. I had him as much as he had me.

"Charlie," I breathed out on a sigh when the first press of his lips eased so he could draw back a millimeter to see… my reaction? My eyes?

His widened at the sound of his name spoken intimate and low because my utterance had been airy, but also eager.

He moved his hands back to thread into my hair. In the process, he cradled the back of my head and my neck, but he also held as if he was afraid I would pull away too soon. My hands ended up against his chest when he pulled my lips to his again. My arms were no barrier between us especially when one of my palms ended up over the heavy beat of his heart.

His mouth slid across mine. I didn't struggle when he urged my movements—to tilt, to open to his questing tongue—because I wanted to tilt, to open. Oh God, I wanted to open.

My tongue met his and the beat of his heart pulsed beneath my hand, increasing until I felt its rhythm transferring itself through my fingers to every part of me. He moaned into my mouth and that too seemed to enter and flow and join with a marrow-deep vibration his touch and taste set off in me.

"No," I protested.

Charlie eased back. I let him lead me from the room I stood behind him, seeing the purple walls, stilled chair and sleeping doll when he began to close the door. The dolls eyes were closed, but its body had slumped and fallen to the side. I was glad when the door clicked closed and Charlie turned the key in the lock.

He pressed his palm against the door's heavy panels with his head bowed for several seconds as if he willed it and all its contents to stay dormant and stale.

Then, he turned back to me in the darkened hallway.

"I won't apologize. I'm not sorry. It would be a lie," he said.

I looked up at his shadowed face. His eyes were light in the darkness, but they looked hollow as if I had taken something from him when I pulled back from the kiss.

I wasn't as hollow as I'd been. The inside of my mind has thousands of synopses fluttered and wakened and tried to fly. I couldn't catch them. They were too flighty and light and quick. But they seemed to tickle long forgotten memories to life.

I had kissed Charlie before.

"Don't," I said. I didn't want him to lie. I didn't want him to apologize. I was filled with enough regret for both of us. It ate at my insides with dull hungry teeth. I wasn't sorry that we had kissed.

I was sorry that the kiss somehow felt wrong.

I retreated to my paint.

This, I could control no matter how uncontrolled the subject of my painting or my reaction to it. My breathing slowed and steadied while I worked even if my lips continued to feel the press of La Croix's.

I knew more of what to paint now.

I added the rocking chair, the giraffe and even the sleeping doll. She frightened me as I painted with the red bow of her mouth and the thick artificial lashes on her cracked porcelain cheeks, fissured with age. But, most of all, with the pale lavender of the ribbons in her hair which exactly matched the one I'd had in my possession for all this dark, lonely year.

I had to force myself to recreate those ribbons, one by one, twined and braided into her far too realistic black curls.

It was almost a relief to move on to the crumpled form of the dead woman on the kaleidoscopic chaos of the Oriental rug. She took shape beneath my flying fingers, but as I tried to recreate what I'd seen and the cause of the darker stained patterns on the floor of the purple room, but my focus shifted from the canvas to the paint smeared pads of my fingers.

My throat tightened. My teeth clenched. I brought my hands away from their task and held them out in front of me until several fat drops of red oil paint fell to the floor. The sound they made—pat,pat,pat—as they fell was horrible to me. I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn't because my hands were covered in angry crimson stain.

Then, the distracting scent of jasmine crept into the room. It flowed on a draft that seemed to come from the door that led out into the hallway and down to my room.

I stood up.

I followed the scent with my fists clenched to keep drips of bright scarlet off the polished Cyprus floors.

The door to my room was open. I stood in the doorway. I'd heard nothing while I painted for hours and hours until night fell, but on the table by the door another fresh sprig of night blooming jasmine had been left in my room. Its petals opened for the dusky night air flowing into my room through a window that hadn't been open before.

I stepped slowly toward the billowing white curtains carefully keeping my stained hands from their pristine diaphanous cotton. Down below in the garden, I saw nothing but an empty bench surrounded by blossom-heavy bushes and the movement of an old tire swing twisting and turning in the breeze. _Lucas._


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

I didn't see a shadow or a man's form but somehow I knew. Lucas left me the blooming jasmine. I felt another ache in my chest. I'm lost. So lost.

I washed the red from my hands. It swirled in gruesome mimicry of something far more sinister as it rinsed down the drain. When I realized that shades of red were all over me and not just on my fingers, I turned the shower on over the ancient claw-footed tub. I stepped under the steaming spray with my eyes closed so I wouldn't see rivulets of red flowing down my body.

After my shower, I pulled on a soft satin camisole I found in a drawer of the bureau in my room and a faded skirt with a floral print that swirled around my ankles. They were mine. I recognized them and they fit my curves perfectly though I blushed to think La Croix had placed them here for me.

Once I'd dressed, I returned to the studio.

I don't know how long I might have painted that evening if La Croix hadn't stopped me. He was suddenly behind me, wrapping his arms around my body to still my compulsive movements.

My fingers had sunk deeply into the thick paint I applied to the canvas when his hands enveloped them.

My eyes focused on our hands as I blinked my nightmare world away. It was as if the purple room of the painting had tried to pull me into its dark and desperate depths, fingers first. Would I have allowed myself to waste away, finally consumed by this obsession to know and remember?

I imagined myself as a skeleton found leaning against a violent canvas, my bones a part of its horrifying tableau.

Then, La Croix's breath on my neck brought me back to the land of the living.

"Stop," he ordered.

He didn't seem to care that his hands were taking up some of the paint I'd tried to bear. I could almost imagine him sharing the burden of the truths I tried to reveal on the canvas when his strong hands didn't shy from the mess. No. He didn't shy away. Instead, he plunged into their wet, silky depths where I was drowning and he brought me out.

His hands slid from my hands to my shoulders leaving violet in their wake. Then, he urged me to my feet.

My body was stiff. I'd probably been in the same position for hours. La Croix must have seen me wince or felt me tense because, without another word, his paint-covered hands kneaded my shoulders.

I groaned. He mistook the sound as an appreciative moan which gave him permission to trail his fingers down my back, squeezing and shaping my stiff muscles so that they would warm and relax.

When he found the edges of my camisole I couldn't protest against the paint or his touch. He lifted it to bare my stomach. Its pale expanse was made even whiter in contrast when my hands came up to stop his and we both left more violet on my skin.

"The paint looks better on you than the canvas," he murmured into my neck.

I couldn't help it. I shuddered.

"Riley, don't…move," he said.

I didn't obey.

I took a step back, one, two, three steps. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn't care. There was so much I didn't know, but for the first time in many months, I was consumed by something other than nightmares and paint.

La Croix and my attraction to Lucas burning away everything else.

La Croix walked towards me and I could feel his fingers so close to where I don't need them to be. And then even closer as he pressed gently on my arm.

But, then, a door closed in the distance with a solid mahogany bang.

Both of us were startled, our movements halted by the intrusion of…who? What? Weren't we the only ones in the house?

I turned, as La Croix slowly stepped away, his fingers reluctantly trailing from my body.

"I left food for you in the kitchen. Get out of this studio. Eat," he said. He was flushed. His eyes heavy-lidded, but he looked toward the door as if expecting more noise or movement. The whole of Belle Rosaliѐ should be silent, yet I'd already learned that the line between should be and would be in this house was indistinct.

La Croix looked back at me and a slight smile unexpectedly lit his face.

In an instant, I forgot about slamming doors.

The smile, no matter how slight, softened the angular edges of his jaw and turned his normally handsome face into something even more beguiling. Could I trust that softening in his features when his face was usually dark and tight?

"I've gotten paint all over you," he said.

I looked down and pressed my violet hands against my hollow stomach. It was past time to eat. But I thought maybe I felt hollow and empty because it was past time for me to finish the painting and get on with my life.

La Croix was only a few feet away, but he looked back at the door again as if there was something urgent that pulled us apart. There was something other than the paint on me or food that required his attention. "I might need to go out for a while, but I'll be back soon," he said. His voice sounded strained. I think I was alone in not regretting the interruption.

I didn't try to stop him when he walked away. One last penetrating look in my direction showed me that his smile had been fleeting. I didn't think the unlit hallway was responsible for the shadows that had reclaimed his face. I shivered, my body suddenly chilled.

I was alone in the studio once more.

Behind me, the painting waited. I turned to it wrapping my arms around myself, for restraint or comfort I couldn't be sure. I'd never created such a three dimensional image. For one startling moment, I had the memory of brighter works filled with lush gardens and colorful flowers, but then the memory was gone. In the here and now, heavy layers of oil paint gleamed wetly, their thick swirls and gloomy ridges raised from the canvas as if seeking and searching to enter the real world. The likeness of the old porcelain doll caught my attention. Had I painted her with her eyes open? She sat in the straight-backed chair, looking out at the room where I stood with the blank stare of her glittering eyes.

I backed away from that stare. I might have had to let La Croix go, but I would give in to his suggestion and go down to the kitchen and eat the food he'd left for me.

Because he'd saved me from the painting, but I was suddenly afraid to be with it alone.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Riley wept. I felt her pain washing through me and I heard her tears, every one of them, as they spilled to the floor. "I need to remember," she cried. "Why can't I remember?"

God, why can't she be with me? She would have rested by my side until I woke at sundown. She would have been all right. But

now-

If the bastard had touched her further, I vowed in helpless silence and impotent rage, I would kill him. I would!

I heard his footsteps pounding, and then I heard no more. I stayed silent in the corner watching as she cried in front of the painting.

My beloved Riley. And I couldn't bear to see her cry. I lifted my hand and stroked her hair.

She went rigid and gazed at me with eyes wider than the moon. " _Lucas_?"

"Riley what's wrong? Did he hurt you?"

"No…what are you?"

"Doing here? I'm here to see you. I was worried when you left but didn't want to scare you further so I let you be. But I'm a—a man. A lonely man, who will live forever. I am immortal. I am…"

 _"Undead,"_ she whispered.

The horror in her eyes was like a blade to my heart as she stumbled backward, away from me. One hand pressed to her heart, but she moved it all at once, to press her fingertips to her throat, where I had tasted her.

"You…you…"

"I am the same man you met the other night. No more. No less. You have nothing to fear from me, Riley."

"Nothing to fear? How can you say that?" She stared at the floor as she backed away from me. "You are a demon. A monster."

I flinched and told myself not to let the words hurt me. She didn't understand. She was afraid. "I am no monster. I'm a man, I tell you. Won't you listen to me? Let me explain?"

She brought her head up, fixing her gleaming brown eyes on mine. "Is this your secret? The one I have to pay for once I've found out? What could be more monstrous than to lie to me about my very life? My very…death?" She shuddered on the final word.

"You didn't have any fear of death that night, Riley. What's changed?"

"You gave me hope. False hope."

She whirled to run out of the room. I lunged after her, moving faster than her eyes could have hoped to follow. To her, it seemed I simply appeared in front of her to block her escape. And even as she tried to stop short, and fell instead, against my chest, I caught her shoulders and held her tight. She tugged against me and shrieked, "Let me go!"

"It wasn't false hope. I can help you. I can save you." I shook her. "Do you hear me? I can!"

Her struggles ceased. She stared up at me with huge eyes, finally, it seemed, hearing my words. Pale and frightened, close to fainting, I guessed, from the excitement, she searched my face and whispered, "How?"

"Then you're ready to listen to me? Finally?"

She blinked twice, and after a moment, nodded. "I'll listen. I suppose if you intended to kill me you could have done so."

"I could. But I would not rob the world of such a gift." I looked around the room. "Not just beautiful but very talented too."

"No, I —" She bit her lip as if she regretted the denial, but then seeing no need of pretense, she went on. "Thank you. I didn't really think I'm a good painter. I only paint to escape."

"Oh, Riley, we are more the same than you could begin to imagine. Come, let us leave this place and go where we can talk comfortably." I took her arm, but she resisted. I looked again into her eyes.

"You felt something for me last night, Riley. Now you feel only fear. Which of the two is more real? Which do you trust?"

She never answered the question, but she came with me.

"Do you have a home?" she asked. "I can't imagine you living in a cave."

"Of course I have a home. My house is not far from here and I can take you there now if that's what you want."

She lowered her head as we exited and moved through the night.

"How long have you been a vampire?" she whispered.

"A very long time."

"I never thought that vampires really do exist," she told me.

"Unfortunately we do," I said with a sigh. "I should leave this place."

"Why haven't you?"

"I saw you." I gazed down at her, and I thought, You are beautiful, Riley.

She gasped and stared up at me in surprise.

"You see? It's not all bad, being as I am. I am a vampire but it tells you nothing about what I truly am, Riley. It tells you nothing about _me,_ " I said, thudding a fist to my heart.

"Then tell me. Tell me about you, Lucas. Tell me why you stay here, when you are so very unhappy. Tell me that above all else."

I nodded, "I came here because it was once my homeland. I once had a family here, a life."

"Is there someone else that knows your secret?"

"A few. I don't really need to tell people about me. I used my powers and my strength to convince people of what I wanted them to see me as."

"How?"

The way her body rested against mine gave me a feeling of warmth I had seldom known, and I relished it. She wasn't afraid. Not yet. "I can…control the thoughts and minds of many."

She lifted her gaze. "Mine?"

"I've no wish to try, Riley. Never fear."

She smiled. "That's a relief."

I nodded and went on. "I would never harm you. You see, there is a woman. An immortal, like me, who has certain gifts of…prophecy. Necromancy. Divination."

"What is her name?"

"Shiri. Or it was. She changes it from time to time. She was a priestess of Egypt. One who accepted the gift when I offered it to her."

"So you're here because of a woman."

"Because of what that woman told me. What she saw in my future. She told me I would find my soul's true love, here in this place. That's why I've stayed. But until I saw you, on the cliffs that night, I had given up hope."

Her face went as still as stone. "You mean…you believe it's me?"

"I'm going to let you be the judge of that," I told her. "Once you've heard my story. I was ill, weak and growing weaker. I was twenty eight years old, at the time. And one night I was simply taken from my bed by a man as strong as ten men should have been. He took me to his home, a crumbling ruin of a castle, and there he…well, he made me into what he was."

She stood looking up at me, her hands resting on my shoulders. "How?"

"I don't want to frighten you with such —"

 _"How?"_ she asked again.

Yes. She needed to know, all of it. "He sank his teeth into my neck, right here." I touched her neck. "It wasn't painful, as you know. But he didn't merely taste me in passion, as I did with you. He drank from me until I was all but drained. And then he made me drink from him. And I did."

A soft gasp was her only reaction.

"When it was done, I slept as if dead. I thought myself to _be_ dead as I drifted into that slumber, for it was far deeper than any sleep I had ever known. And when I woke…I was changed."

Her face was pale in the darkness. She seemed afraid and yet eager to hear all I had to tell her. "Changed in what ways? Did you _feel_ differently? Look differently?"

I nodded. "My senses were heightened to a point where it was nearly unbearable at first. Every touch was magnified a thousand times, and more so with every year I live. Be it pain…or pleasure."

"Oh." She averted her eyes.

"My hearing was acute. My eyesight, like an eagle's. My weakness — gone and replaced by a strength such as no human being has ever known. I can run too fast to be seen by mortal eyes. I can leap, to the top of this tree if I wish it. I can listen to the thoughts of humans, and other immortals, as well, and speak to them and…there's so much, Riley. So much. I'm immortal, ever young, ever strong."

She nodded slowly, turning to pace away from me, and then sitting in the grasses and flowers. I moved to sit beside her. "You make it all sound wonderful."

"It is…or, it could be."

"Then why had you decided to take your own life?"

I looked at her sharply. "You are too insightful for me," I told her. "But you're correct, there are…drawbacks to living this life. I can never see the sun again. It would burn me to cinders."

"Then…you _can_ die?"

"Everything can die. I think in time, everything does. I can die, from the sunlight, or by fire. An open flame is a dangerous thing to a man like me. A cut, even a minor one, could cause me to bleed to death. And pain for me is…it's excruciating."

"I see."

"But worse than all of those things is the loneliness. When you live so long, Riley, everything you know dies before you. Kingdoms come and go. Ways of life, entire civilizations pass out of existence, and yet, you go on."

"Searching," she whispered. "For someone to share it with."

"Yes. Exactly that."


	11. Chapter 11

**Hello-hello...for those of you who left their comments and enjoys reading this story, I thank you! I get that this story is different and somewhat heavier than my usual stories but I really like how this story turned out and I am happy that some people appreciate it like I do. Having said that please be warned that MATURE contents are included in this chapter. Enjoy :)**

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 **Chapter 11**

"How old are you," she whispered.

I lowered my head. "One hundred forty one."

She blinked and nodded slowly. "And what about…what about what they say about some vampires drinking the blood of virgins to survive?"

I met her eyes, smiling slightly. "Living blood. Be it that of virgins or sheep. And I never kill in order to feed. I tasted of your blood — only a sip. And yet you live."

She lowered her eyes from mine. "It was a sensation I…I never…"

"I know. I felt it, too." I stroked her hair, remembering, my blood heating, my hunger growing.

"Is it always like that?"

"No. At first I didn't know why the sensations of blood sharing were so exaggerated with you. But I think I understand now."

"Then make me understand."

I nodded. "Most humans cannot become what I am, Riley. Only a select few. It's something about the blood, something different, and unique. Among my kind we call those unique ones _The Chosen._ We sense them, are drawn to them inexplicably and irresistibly. There is a powerful attraction between the Undead and _The Chosen._ "

"On both sides?"

"Yes," I whispered, my fingertips stroking her cheek.

"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know if I can bear to live a life such as you've described to me. I don't know if I can…"

"Let me show you how it can be, between us. Let me show you, Riley. Only then can you decide."

"I…" She looked up at me, afraid and yet curious, and aching for something she did not understand.

"Let me make love to you, Riley."

"I…I don't think…I want that so much. But — you won't change me?"

"I vow it to you. I will not change you."

"Lucas, I won't lie to you, I want to be with you but I don't know if I should. I don't want to hurt Charlie—."

I kissed her then. I pressed my mouth to hers and tasted her lips, slid my tongue between them to sample the moistness inside. And she gasped and was stiff and tense.

I lifted my head. "I can make it easier for you," I told her.

"How?"

"I can take the fear and the inhibitions from your mind by commanding it with my own. Would you like that, Riley?"

She blinked in surprise. "To surrender to you? My very mind?"

"Yes. Surrender to me. Your mind. Your body. Your soul." I nuzzled her neck, her shoulder, and lowered her body into the deep grasses. "Say yes, Riley. Give yourself over, just for a little while. Trust me."

"I do trust you."

"Then…" I sat up and left her lying there. I probed into her mind with the power of my own, and took what I had been asking her to give me. "You have no fear of me, Riley. You know I will never harm you. You trust me utterly."

"Yes," she whispered, and the fear and hesitation fled from her eyes, from her mind.

I lifted her shirt her breasts strained against the fabric, until I pushed it away, baring them to the night sky, to my eyes, to my touch.

I did not take control of her mind. I wanted her to give herself to me freely. But I did ease the fears and the shyness away. I soothed her, whispering to her innermost soul that she could trust me utterly. And she could, it was nothing less than the truth.

My lips traced a path over her neck and chest, to her breasts, and then I took them, suckled them deeply and hungrily, one and then the other. My lady's hands clasped my head, held me to her, arched her back, and from within her mind I knew the delicious sensations coursing through her. I knew her every thought, her every desire. When she wished my tongue to flick over her stiffening peaks, I complied. And when she wanted the pinch of my teeth, I gave it to her.

And all the while, my own desire grew. I rubbed against her outer thigh, to show her, and in a vain effort to seek release, though it only served to arouse me more. When I lifted her skirts, she began to stiffen up again.

No, my love, I whispered to her inside her mind. No, you aren't afraid. You want this. You know you do. You want my touch. Here …

And with the thoughts, I pressed my hand to her center. She whimpered and moved against me, until I parted her folds and explored within. Heat and wetness greeted me.

I _wanted_ more than I had ever wanted before as I probed and plumbed the very depths of her, and then focused all my attention on the center of her desire, the tiny kernel of flesh that set off a thousand sensations when I pressed and squeezed and rolled it.

Her cries grew louder, unabashedly animalistic while my hand worked her center, and my mouth, her breasts. I grew rougher, hungrier, and she seemed to enjoy it all the more.

Impatient now, the bloodlust raging in me, I pulled her shirt and skirt off so that I could see all of her. Utterly naked, exposed to me. In a flash her hands flew to cover her body.

I sat up over her, staring down. "No, Riley. You are mine, body and soul. You want to give yourself over to my every desire. Don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then say it."

"I am yours," she moaned. "And _you_ are _mine,_ Lucas."

I stripped away my clothes in a frenzy of desire, and then I lay atop her, my hands pressing her thighs apart as I lowered myself to her center, and without hesitation, slid inside.

She gasped, her nails digging into my shoulders and her thighs going taut.

"Open to me," I whispered.

And she did; she opened wide and I sank myself inside her to the very depths of her, like burying myself in a sweet haven from which I never wished to emerge. I pulled back and drove again as she moaned in sensation.

With my hand I tipped her head to one side, and pushed the hair away from the skin of her neck, baring it, and watching the tiny pulse beat just beneath the flesh as I took her body and lowered my head to take her blood, as well.

I sank my teeth into her throat and she screamed and I knew it wasn't in pain, but in the most exquisite pleasure she had ever known.

The orgasm rocked her body as I fed, and it was echoed in my own until I forced myself to release her neck, to ease my body down beside hers. I held her gently in my arms until the waves of pleasure subsided. It was, I knew, beyond ordinary release. Beyond even, preternatural sensation. Beyond anything I had ever known, and certainly far beyond anything she had ever imagined.

Breathless, she whispered, "I never knew it was…it would be like…"

"It's not. Or not with anyone else, Riley. It never has been."

She looked up, surprised. "Really?"

"I'm as stunned by it as you are," I told her. "Though, perhaps, not surprised. I've been told that sharing blood with one of _The Chosen_ can be overpowering."

She snuggled closer into my arms. "It was. And wonderful. But —"

"But?" I felt the cold finger of panic touch my heart. To me, in my mind, that act of lovemaking, of blood sharing, had bound this woman to me. I thought I had claimed her as my own, and she had claimed me as hers. It hadn't occurred to me that she might feel differently. "You still have doubts?"

"I…" She seemed to search for words. "Making love to you is heaven. Beyond heaven. But it tells me nothing of living as…as you must live. Nothing of being…what you are."

I lowered my head, my heart sinking. "I thought it would be enough."

Her palm cupped my face. "It may very well be, Lucas. But I have issues of my own. I still don't know who I am and there's also Charlie. Can you not give me time to know more? After all, it's more than the decision of a lifetime. It's a decision for _all_ time."

"What can you learn in time that you don't already know?"

"Who I am."

I was impatient, angry, perhaps, but unsure why. I suppose I wanted her unabashed acceptance, rather than something so noncommittal.

"Lucas," she said softly. "You told me that once I knew your secrets, I would be bound to you for all my days. Be they many or be they few. I have no desire to change that. I want to be with you, from this day forward. That I know. My only uncertainty lies not with you, but with myself. I need to know who I am. I want to know if I have a family other than Charlie. What if they are looking for me? And for that I need more time." She brushed her lips over mine. "Do you understand my feelings?"

I swallowed. "I do, but I don't like the notion of waiting and this other man. I saw the way he looks at you. He wants you Riley. Anything could happen. As long as you remain mortal, you cling to the fragile lifetime of a mortal. The smallest accident or illness could take you from me before I could do a thing to prevent it. By the Gods, woman, I waited over a hundred years for you."

"I understand — and I'm not ill. Not with any illness, at least."

I sighed, pulling her tightly into my arms. "I don't think I can let you go, Riley."

"Give me a few days, Lucas. Enough to at least become used to this idea. Enough to…to adjust, to understand and accept. Please?"

I stared at her for a long moment, at the genuine feeling in her eyes. And at last I said, "Yes. I will give you the time you ask for, if you will give me something in return."

"Anything," she whispered, and blushing added, "though I believe I've already given you all that I have of value."

"What you've given me is priceless. What I ask is even more so. Give me your hand, Riley. Be my bride. Marry me. Tonight."


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

"Marry you? T-tonight?" Her wide brown eyes seemed endlessly deep with wonder, and a hint of disbelief. "How can you know me enough to make me your wife after an acquaintance of mere days?"

"Think about it, Riley. Had we never met, neither of us would be alive tonight. I had no wish to be alive before I found you — nor did you before that fateful meeting on the cliffs. How is it so difficult, then, to believe that we belong together?"

"Is that what you really believe?"

"It is," I told her, and it was true. I did believe it. I still do. "We have no one to answer to, Riley. We can do this if we wish it. And you have no family to object."

She looked up at me, sadness and tears filled her eyes that made my throat go tight. "You don't know that Lucas. And even if I don't have any family left, there is still Charlie to consider. I cannot marry you tonight"

After I ate, I padded quickly through a far-too-quiet house. I didn't know when Charlie would return. I hadn't heard his car, but I could tell the house was empty around me. I went back upstairs to wash and change clothes trying very hard not to think about Lucas. This time, I pulled on soft, lacy underthings from the bureau and I found a cheerful yellow sundress in the closet. It was lightly faded and I imagined I'd felt the swish of its skirt around my legs before.

Once I'd accomplished all those necessary things, I brushed my fingers over the jasmine that always seemed to be fresh by the door even though I never saw it being replaced.

 _By the door._

I found myself walking back to the studio. The steady beat of my heart increased in tempo, but I didn't stop myself. I fisted my hands, already imagining the cool slide of paint on my fingers. The compulsion to remember was too great for me to ignore.

Only, when I stepped into the studio, Charlie was there. He must have returned while I was changing out of my paint stained clothes.

The trunk was open. Many of the portraits I'd tried to paint of Lucas over the last year were unfurled.

"Riley?" he asked as I stepped over the threshold.

He opened his arms and the portrait he'd been looking at slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor.

"Charlie, I—"

"Who is he?"

"I didn't remember," I replied, but I continued into the room, closer and closer to the man I should probably avoid.

"But you did remember…something," he argued. He looked at all the paintings scattered around, then back into my eyes.

"Someone," I said. "I remembered someone."

The green eyed man- _Lucas_. Him- _Charlie_ , but wrong. Angry and frightening with a dead woman lying at his feet. Still, I came closer, drawn to the emotions playing in his face.

I wanted a closer look at this La Croix. I wanted to soak up every detail of his face out of the shadows.

But I came too close.

I stepped into the circle of his arms and they were already closing around me. Shadows returned to his eyes in between one blink and the next.

"I thought you'd left without saying goodbye, but I couldn't make myself believe it. I still watched and waited to hear from you. I thought of you…often," La Croix said.

He pulled me closer as he said it. A tug of his arms behind my back so I took the final step to bring my chest to his. I gasped because the full body contact overwhelmed, but it also reminded. I fit against him. _And we'd touched before._

But we've never been whole before. Unlike with Lucas.

"I thought of you," I confessed in a ragged whisper. "I remembered you."

I didn't tell him that he'd frightened me. Every night for a year. Because that wasn't all he'd done. He'd haunted me as well.

La Croix's hand came up to touch my face. He threaded his fingers into my hair and softly caressed my eyebrow with his thumb.

"I was the last person you saw," he said.

He leaned to brush his lips where his thumb had been and my heart kicked in my chest. Because this was tender, but it was also dangerous. The low southern rumble of his voice against my breasts. The strength of his arm holding me close. The heat of his mouth on my skin.

And the green.

The oh-so-perfect shade of green glittered behind his lowered lashes.

I froze. My fingers paused. Lucas.

He gripped his fingers around mine and I tried to stepped back so I could no longer touch him.

"Charlie what happened here? I don't remember," I continued, more frustrated than before.

"It's better this way. It's better if you don't remember anything at all," he said.

My time was running out.

I didn't stop him when he let go of my hand and crunched through the discarded portraits to make it to the door. He turned, standing at the door with the dark hall at his back. His eyes flashed, darker than ever before.

"I'll kiss you again. Unless you forbid it. And even then I'll want to and you'll know it, every second of every day…and night," La Croix said.

His words made a hot coil of heat twist inside of me.

"I forbid it," I said.

Forever.

My words seemed to pull him back into the room a step or two before he caught himself again with his hands on either side of the door jam.

"You can't know that when you don't know everything," he said. He paused, his grip on the door jamb tighter than it needed to be…if he had been casually standing and not holding himself back.

And then he turned in a sudden rush of movement and left me alone.

I blinked against the sting in my eyes. I stood with my feet firmly planted. I didn't cry or chase him down the hall to beg for answers he didn't think I was strong enough to hear.

I inhaled deeply as I watched another man kiss Riley. I can feel my eyes burning and swallowed through a dry mouth. The desire to rip the guy's throat is so strong. I swallowed my anger. I have waited over a hundred years for her and even though all I wanted was to sweep Riley off her feet and bring her to my home I stayed in the shadows and let the offensive man touched and kissed her.

"You can come out now."

My lips were already open and hungry when Lucas moved his lips down my face and along my jaw to find them. I couldn't have stopped the eager pained sound I made in the back of my throat when our mouths came together. I twisted my hands into his shirt to hold on and my ferocity popped his top buttons free.

He moaned in response, flicking his tongue out and questing between my lips with its hot tip. I suckled, urging him to probe deeper. Both his hands were in hair now and he held me for deeper and deeper explorations. I undid the remaining buttons of his shirt, fumbling and eager to feel his muscular chest.

Lucas broke his lips from mine. His impressive chest rose and fell beneath my explorations, but he dropped one of his hands to press over my fingers.

"Come away with me my love."

"Lucas I can't," I said.

His whole body was tense. The tension transferred itself to me though the grip of his fingers. I needed to remember. No matter how horrible the memories would be they were a part of me, without them, I was a cracked hour glass and before long I would be empty, bereft of all I'd been before.

I turned to my painting instead.

When I did, a fission of unease skittered down my spine.

Reluctantly, I forced myself to move closer. Step by step, I approached the painting I'd worked on all day and into the evening until Charlie had pulled me from its hold..

The doll was no longer in the chair near the giraffe where I had painted her. She was now sitting on the floor near the dead woman, slumped forward as only a spineless doll can slump.

The eyes that had made me uncomfortable earlier seemed to gleam an even more focused glassy blue.

My body went numb from my heart—gone strangely sluggish and slow—outward to tingling fingertips that still held the scent of the jasmine I'd touched in my room.

No.

I hadn't changed the painting.

And no part of me could imagine Charlie painting the eerie old doll in a different location or painstakingly fixing the spot where she'd been.

No. No. No.

Something very wrong was happening at Belle Rosaliѐ.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

I didn't think.

Instinct drove me from the altered painting and out of the studio. I hadn't seen which direction Charlie had turned, but I followed nonetheless.

I knew.

Or my heart knew and whispered its wise instructions to my feet.

Down the hall, up another flight of stairs and into a suite of rooms at the top of the house with the best view of the garden below. Familiarity enveloped me from the sachet scent of lavender and cedar to the soft glow of lamps with golden silk shades.

My steps slowed.

I came to a stop in the middle of a sitting room. I lifted one hand up to press against my lips to quiet the cry that wanted to escape. I wanted to call for Charlie. The familiarity held a threat I couldn't understand. My pulse leapt and my respiration came quick and light.

I knew this place.

These rooms were a part of me and my past, but there were shadowy corners here I was suddenly afraid to face.

"Riley," Charlie said, whispering my name as I kept myself from calling out his.

He came from the other room where I could see the large solid shape of a rice bed. Its gleaming dark wood complimented the bed clothes of vivid white damask.

I stood on the precipice of revelation when I saw him stride from the bedroom, when he whispered my name in raw welcome in this suite some part of me knew so well. But instead of being relieved I was terrified. This moment of almost knowing sent a warning flow of adrenaline rushing beneath my skin.

Charlie saw my distress. He came to me. He took me in his arms. He didn't speak beyond soothing wordless murmurs hummed into my still-damp hair.

"Please, come back to me," he groaned.

 _Please, come back to me._

I moved from Charlie's embrace. I made my way downstairs through a dark house to the studio.

The altered painting sat where I had left it.

This was my work, my nightmare and my memory I sought to reclaim. Anger overcame my earlier fear. I wouldn't allow anyone or anything to interfere. I reached for a trowel and scratched away the fresh paint that I hadn't placed on the canvas. When I did, it was as if my mind was emboldened. Flashes came to me. Then faces. Then conversations.

I fumbled for paints to express it all. My life from before.

The woman on the floor was Camille Bradshaw. She had held a gun and pointed it at…someone…someone I loved. I had stopped her. I had struggled with her for the gun and it had gone off.

I looked down once again at the scarlet on my hands. That night it hadn't been paint. I had turned from Camille where she lay on the floor.

And Charlie's eyes had been terrifying.

I'd also painted those eyes at St. Teresa's again and again and again.

I had been shell shocked. Horrified. I'd reached for him with bloody hands…and he had suddenly, ferociously pushed me away. I had fallen. Hard. And the last thing I'd seen was my own blood running into my eyes.

I couldn't reconcile the man who had declared to love me for the rest of our lives with this violent man I painted. Something wasn't right. I remembered. I painted all I knew, but I didn't know it all.

"I'll never forgive myself," Charlie said.

I whirled. He stood in the doorway again and this time I thought I could understand the shadows in his eyes. He came into the room. He approached me and my heartbeat sped. He had hurt me. He had made me lose myself for a whole year at St. Teresa's.

I was the murderer. I had killed Camille Bradshaw. But Charlie was my nightmare, tall and dark and stepping closer and closer.

"I don't blame you for looking at me with those tragic eyes—so beautiful, so betrayed," Charlie said. He'd clenched his fists. The white of his knuckles caused my body to brace, ready to run, ready to fight.

"Because you did betray me. You did not tell me that you were already involved with someone. Camille. She had gone mad. You'd promised her forever just like you did to me."

"No. I never promised Camille marriage. When I met you and fell in love, Camille decided to hurt us both by taking away the person most precious to us."

"Rosalie," I said. The name in its modern Americanized form immediately freed the rest of my sluggish memories. Charlie's great-aunt. I had saved her life as she had mine after my family tragically died in a plane crash. My being sang with that knowledge even as I mourned all the days we'd lost.

"We just got home from an appointment and no one was expecting us to get back so soon. When we arrived the house was deathly still." Charlie tried to reach out but I backed away. "Camille came to the house and she was going to shoot Rosalie. We came around the corner, but I was in front of you. I was so excited to see Rosalie and tell her about the wedding cake design. I saw the gun before you did. It was…my God…Camille was pointing it at Rosalie. I saved her. I threw myself at Camille and grappled for control of the gun. When the gun went off, I saw red and…"

"You were reckless. She wasn't going to really shoot Rosalie. She only wanted to scare us," Charlie finished for me, I finally understood just how dark that night had been.

"You pushed me and I hit the chair." I said.

Charlie was back in the shadows again, dwelling on a night and the mistakes and madness that had destroyed us. "Rosalie had always been eccentric and she was nearing her ninetieth birthday. She panicked. Trying to care for you. It wasn't until she died that I discovered what she had done."

"She was protecting me," I recalled. I remembered how she doesn't seem to accept my relationship with Charlie.

"I wasn't going to harm you. Her meddling had almost caused me to lose you even when you'd survived Camille's attack… and your fall," Charlie said.

"No Charlie, I didn't just fall. You pushed me," I said. "You weren't planning on telling me about Camille. You weren't going to break it off with her. You wanted us both. I remember now how panicked you are when you saw her bleeding and the anger and hatred in your eyes toward me."

I relished the steady beat of my heart. As the meaning of my words soaked in, his body tensed.

"I won't let you go Riley."

"But you will." Lucas suddenly appeared beside me and told Charlie.

I felt my Riley go stiff beside me, felt her gaze turn to one of disapproval as her hand tightened on my arm.

The man sucked in a sharp gasp, and Riley held my eyes and shook her head firmly. "No Lucas. It's over. It's time for us to go." And then she turned to the man. "You and Rosalie became part of my family and for that I will always be grateful. Goodbye Charlie."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

He agreed, not because of her reasoning, but out of fear of me. He sense that I did not make threats I would not carry out, and didn't trust this mite of a woman's ability to temper my rage. Nodding his acceptance, "Take care Riley. Just remember that you will always have a place here at Belle Rosaliѐ."

"She wouldn't have any reason to come back," I told him, and with my love in the circle of my arms, I tugged her from the house.

I paused on the garden path. My cheeks were damp as I spun around in a circle surrounded by a jasmine breeze. Tears stung my eyes as I felt the familiar curl of Lucas' fingers in my hand.

We walked to the porch and sat on a swing hung there to take advantage of shade when the sun was high. Tonight, we only had the glow of fireflies and the faint light from the windows as we sat.

We swayed on the porch swing, to and fro, as my heart started again with almost painful beats.

"She always protected me from Charlie. Sometimes she would ask me to do menial errands just so I would be away from Charlie. She always knew," I said.

"You didn't suspect that something was off?" he asked. It was too dark. I could barely see his face and our words were hushed and more momentous somehow because of my vision being dulled by the late evening velvet of the night around us.

"No. Not really. There were some discomfort but I brushed it as pre-wedding jitters. I could never understand why I didn't want to be with him completely. I just thought I was saving myself until we got married." I explained.

"She loves you and she's still protecting you."

"Is she here with us now?" I asked. Goose flesh had risen on my skin. I thought of the purple room and the doll and the painting that now sat covered in a stained drop cloth in my studio.

"I believe that Belle Rosaliѐ is grand mere and grand mere is Belle Rosaliѐ ," Lucas said. I felt him shrug nudge me though I couldn't see his movements. "We're never really gone Riley. Part of us always stay."

I laid my head on his shoulder. He draped his arm around me to pull me close.

Was I prepared to believe that the house had been responsible for what I'd seen and felt in the purple room? Did the spirit of Rosalie live on in the old house's walls and had she inspired my painting, teasing and taunting and giving me nightmares until I was strong enough to reclaim what I'd lost and what I would gain?

The creak of the swing beneath us and the sound of the house sighing as its old boards cooled off from a hot summer day made me think it was possible. After what I'd been through, I had to believe anything was possible, even a fairytale ending for a story filled with shadows.

"Thank you," I whispered to Belle Rosaliѐ as I held Lucas close.

Holding her in my arms, I frowned at her. "Are you feeling worn out from all of this?"

"Only a little tired. But, I don't wish for this night to end."

"It will. All nights do. Be _we_ need not end, Riley. Not ever."

She smiled and rested her head against me. "I know."

How I loved her. My jewel. My princess.

She gazed up at me, love and fear in her eyes. "Would it hurt once you turned me?" she whispered.

"You will see the sun for as long as you can," I told her.

"I don't understand. I've made my decision," she told me. "I'll be as you are, I will. I wish to be with you always."

I held her, rocked her gently in my arms, kissed her hair, her face. "Riley, now that you know who you are I want you to be free to explore. I will be with you my love. When you're ready then I will turn you. You'll be immortal."

"Do it now."

I pushed her hair from her tear damp face, and shook my head. "I need you to understand what you'll be experiencing. It's like a death, Riley. A death and a rebirthing. The adjustment after the change might take months, years even. You may not like it, you may not like me after that. I won't have it."

"I won't hate you. I promise. You asked me to marry you before and I turned it down. I will marry you once you've turned me!"

I lowered my head as grief made my voice catch in my throat. "I cannot. I simply cannot."

She trembled and wept, and I tipped her face to mine and kissed her, tasting her tears. "I love you, Riley. Who knew a man could fall so deeply in love so suddenly? You…you've stricken my heart like a bolt of lightning. Nothing could keep me from you. Not ever. But I want you to see the sun. To enjoy life and be happy."

"I will be happy. Let me be with you. Let me be like you," she whispered against my neck.

I closed my eyes in sweet agony. Gods, it was tempting. To have her by my side…but I knew better.

"I love you," she told me.

"I love you," she told me, again, and kissed me desperately. "With all I am, I love you!"

"And I you." I told her. "I am almost convinced this is all no more than a sweet dream, and that I will awaken to the lonely reality of my life as it was before."

"It is a dream," she told me softly. "A dream come true."

 **The End.**


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